


Held Under These Smothering Waves

by saltslimes



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Sickfic, brotherhood era, its winter so like winter fic eh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-07
Updated: 2019-02-07
Packaged: 2019-10-24 01:03:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17694620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltslimes/pseuds/saltslimes
Summary: Sickfic classique for the winter. Prompto is at his usual business of living in a house with a broken furnace, and the chocobros are at their business of being rightfully horrified.





	Held Under These Smothering Waves

**Author's Note:**

> for the delightful [avarii](http://avarii.tumblr.com/)
> 
> title is from Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod, a very Prompto song

When he got to school it felt like he might have permanently lost the use of his hands, but then the pins and needles started, so he knew he was just on a long ride down out of the cold.

By second period the burning had faded out, and he could flex his fingers without pain, and thank the astrals, use a pencil properly. So the first period math test was a wash, no biggie. His math grades were fine. One C on one test wasn’t going to topple the whole house of cards.

In history they had an extended time for independent study while the teacher graded essays at his desk. The lights hummed overhead, and Prompto’s seat at the back of the class had him pressed against the radiator. If he slid his chair back a few inches the plastic got actually hot where it touched metal. He rested his head on his arms and tried to keep his eyes open, but they slipped shut with no regard for his homework.

When he woke up it was to someone snapping their fingers in front of his face. Mr. Lienem didn’t look mad per se, but he didn’t look happy either. The classroom was largely empty.

“Shouldn't you be getting to lunch?” he said. Prompto felt blush bloom in his cheeks and knew with dreadful surety that the flush was on his shoulders too, heat burning against his under-starched uniform shirt. He stammered out a quick apology and fled the room. Noct had texted at some point while Prompto had been sleeping through class, but he didn’t respond when Prompto replied. He had probably gone back to bed.

He sat with his back to Noct’s locker and ate the two protein bars he’d brought for lunch, washed it all down with a drink from the water fountain. The lights in the hall were overbright. It felt like a dental implement was working its way through his eye socket into his brain. He felt like he was walking underwater where the pressure was too deep. Without Noct the school always seemed more hollow, and he more hollow with it.

Most of the time he felt like a cavity, like a rotted out part of other people’s lives. But it was easy enough to shove that thought out, or at least back where he didn’t have to listen to it.

It was warm in the hall, almost uncomfortably so. He rested his head against the locker and drifted again. He slept through third period and was woken by the rush of students spilling from classrooms at the bell. He and Noct had missed each other again, but they weren’t really talking. Noct’s message was a string of incoherent gifs, and Prompto’s reply was short and unimaginative. It was still snowing outside. The high windows in the gym had flakes passing them each time he looked up.

When he ran whatever was clogged in his chest seemed to wrench loose and he had to stop every ten steps to cough, but when he spit mucus into the far sink in the locker room he felt lighter and better and not so much like a drowning animal.

The locker room was too bright, and the lights in there hummed but not in the comforting way like the ones in class. His arms shook where he gripped the edge of the sink. He could hear people just past the wall talking about assignments and events, talking about video games and gym. For a moment, he was a cipher again, a ghost with no name who managed to take up too much space and be invisible both at once. But the memory passed, and the feeling with it. He washed his hands with pink soap. He changed back into his uniform. 

And then school ended, and he had to go home. The lights still worked, which was a blessing. But the perfect untouched sheets in his parent’s bed were so cold it felt like they could sprout ice crystals, and in the light the house seemed emptier, and the busted furnace insurmountable, and everything impossible to deal with.

He did homework in bed, buried in blankets. As long as he never left for too long at a time, the bed would retain some heat. Noctis woke up and they texted for a while. Noct asked about school and complained about the weather. He was easy to talk to, which Prompto was endlessly grateful for.

He brushed his teeth without meeting his reflection’s gaze at any point. He went to bed with two hot water bottles and slept through three alarms. Getting dressed with numb fingers was a challenge; the buttons on his shirt resisted his grasp. Getting his bag together and trying to keep his eyes open was also hard. And opening the door into the biting cold was the worst, because the wind cut at his cheeks immediately and he wanted to give in, to give up and crawl back into the sheets and sleep for another hundred years.

But he had the text from his mom--confirmation that the furnace guys would be there within the week. And he had the message from Ignis, sounding as official as ever, asking him if he could pick up Noct’s homework. Those two things bore him through the cold, even as it soaked through his jacket and infiltrated his socks. Those two things got him to school. And by second period, his fingers weren’t numb anymore. They were working properly.

[[[]]]

Ignis washed his hands with water that was hotter than strictly necessary. He dried them on towels that were crisp white despite Noctis’ every effort. He checked his phone and put the kettle on. Prompto had responded almost instantly, but now he was late. He struck Ignis as a well-intentioned boy who lacked follow-through.

He checked in on Noctis, who was still sleeping. His fever had broken yesterday but he was still groggy and insisted on staying home from school. This year his attendance record had been shockingly consistent, so Ignis obliged. 

When was the last time Noctis was actually excited to go to school? To do anything, honestly. Prompto obviously had something to do with it. Ignis had met him on a few occasions. He was… a lot. Exuberant, noisy, a little clumsy. He seemed kind-hearted, but looks could be deceiving. 

Ignis was well versed in the types of people who made an effort to befriend Noctis, and some of them were pretty good at the act. They could play the long game, wait a long time before they started asking the prince favors and using him to get into events. One or two of them had just been kids with overbearing parents. They were diligent but not truly malicious. But the result was the same. Noctis got hurt, either way. And Ignis was finished with letting that happen.

As the kettle whined, he checked his phone again. A few emails about official business. Nothing more from Prompto. But as he was reaching for the teapot his phone let out a soft noise, and he found a message. Prompto was waiting outside. Ignis buzzed down and told the doorman to let him in.

“Blond kid? Kind of ratty looking?” the doorman clarified. Ignis frowned.

“Yes, that should be him.”

“Okay.”

Prompto wasn’t exactly overzealous with ironing or pressing parts of his uniform, but Ignis wouldn’t have described him as a ratty. He seemed to take a lot of care and pride in her personal hygiene. It wasn’t until he opened the apartment door that he saw what the doorman had meant.

Prompto was out of breath, blood crusted on his upper lip, his coat torn at the elbow. His cheeks were burnt pink with cold, drowning his freckles in color.

“Prompto.” Ignis didn’t intend for it to come out so stunned, but he’d been expecting the same boy he’d met picking up Noctis at the arcade, not this wild-eyed creature heaving for air on Noctis’ doorstep.

“I have the homework,” he said, thrusting it at Ignis. It was in a plastic bag, sheets clearly bent.

“I--what happened?” Ignis said, and the smile fell off Prompto’s face instantly.

“I fell down the stairs. But I checked and all the sheets are still readable and stuff. I’d trade them for mine but his class is ahead of mine in chem.”

“No, I mean,” Ignis went to gesture and stopped himself when he realized it would be to Prompto in general. “Would--ah--come in for tea.” He’d been intending to invite him in anyways, out of politeness, but questions were being sparked that he couldn’t leave lying. Did he get in fights? Was he a violent boy? Reckless? Could this be part of some scheme?

Prompto visibly hesitated. His gaze flicked down to the shoe mat and then back to Ignis’ face as if he was trying to add something up.

“I uh, I should get going,” he started, but Ignis cut him off.

“I insist.” He stepped back from the threshold, and Prompto carried in the sorry little package of homework. He was wearing shoes. Running shoes, the same ones he’d been wearing on the last two occasions Ignis had met him. Which wouldn’t be remarkable at all if there weren't two feet of snow outside.

When he shrugged off his jacket he revealed a tear in the shirt below as well, and a scrape sluggishly bleeding into the fabric.

“I’ll patch that up. Sit here,” Ignis said. Prompto obeyed without question. He retrieved the first aid kit from the linen closet. It was well stocked ever since Noctis’ brief experiment with skateboarding.

Ignis disinfected the cut and wrapped it with gauze.

“You fell down the stairs?” he asked. Prompto was blowing bloody mucus into a tissue.

“It was really slippery.” Right. He was clumsy. Ignis knew that. His skin was cold to the touch, remarkably so.

“Did you come a long way?”

“Just from the school.”

“You didn’t take the bus?”

“Nah, I’m trying to save money.” Prompto said this easily, and then seemed to catch himself. “Uh, I’m getting a new lens. For my camera. So I’m just, you know. Saving.”

“Admirable,” Ignis said. He served tea and got his sewing kit out. Prompto sat with his hands wrapped around the cup as if it was his only lifeline in a sea of terrors. Ignis sewed the jacket back together with tight precision stitches.

“How’s Noct, is he doing any better?”

“Much, but he’s sleeping.”

“Oh, right,” Prompto said. He glanced towards the door. The whole time he’d been inside, the flush had yet to leave his cheeks. The shivers were just starting now. Ignis wondered if he should offer to drive him home, lest the prince’s only friend become a popsicle because he valued his hobby over his health.

There was a sound from Noct’s room. Probably him knocking something off his nightstand. Ignis stood but then considered Prompto.

“Don’t go anywhere,” he said. Prompto nodded as if he’d just been given the most important order of his lifetime. Noct was still asleep, and had indeed knocked over an empty cup. It was plastic, so it had simply bounced and rolled away to the other side of the room. Ignis retrieved it silently and closed the door behind himself.

He paused in the hallway. The people upstairs were mercilessly vacuuming again. Someone down the hall was playing music loud enough to penetrate the other units. But in Noct’s apartment everything was silent, the only sound was the tick of the hall clock and Noctis’ muffled breathing from behind the door.

When he came back into the kitchen he came back quietly. Prompto was in the same seat, chin rested on one hand. When Ignis came around the side of him, he found his eyes shut. Seemingly, he was asleep.

“Prompto?” he ventured, and that did the trick. Prompto jerked awake, blinking furiously.

“Oh my gods, sorry!”

“If they’re working you that hard at school no wonder Noctis wants the time off,” he said.

“Haha.” Prompto’s laugh was mirthless and toneless. For a second excitement and panic stirred in Ignis’ gut. Maybe this was the other face, the one he wouldn’t show Noct but wasn’t as practiced at hiding from others.

“Nah, it’s just that it’s so warm in here.”

“It is?” Ignis kept his own apartment at a moderate 23, while Noctis generally dropped the heat to 20 so he could live buried in blankets.

“Yeah, for sure.”

“Have another cup,” Ignis said, not as a question, and reached for the teapot. A shadow of something crossed over Prompto’s face.

“I should go--” he started.

“Noctis will be having dinner soon and I’m sure you could do a better job catching him up on his assignments in person.”

“Oh, I guess.” That, again, was someone alien and different from the boy he’d met briefly outside the school, the one in the car after the arcade. He was sullen, a little withdrawn. That flush had still not left his cheeks, what was he so concerned about?

They chatted about school for a little bit. It was evident that Prompto studied hard, even if he wasn’t the brightest. It seemed like his parents expected a lot of him. That was something he and Noctis had in common, in some regard.

But as the conversation went on Prompto’s answers got shorter and shorter, and he seemed to droop in his seat. He was stifling a cough, and when he finally excused himself to the bathroom Ignis could hear hacking echo off the porcelain fixtures.

He put dinner on. It was only soup, and he’d prepared it ahead of time. Gladio texted that he’d be arriving later than planned. When Prompto came back from the bathroom he looked paler but still flushed. He probably had whatever Noctis had. Unpleasant but short-lived.

“Could I get you something?”

“I’m fine, it’s all good,” Prompto said, re-taking his seat. He shivered. Ignis selected a new direction to press in.

“You find it warm in here?”

“Uh, I did. I don’t know.” He rubbed his arm absently, not the injured one. “The stairs kind of did a number on me.” If there was a time to make some request this was probably it. Ignis kept his expression neutral and waited. Prompto huffed a small sigh.

“Do I really need to stay?” he asked, in a small voice. Ignis blinked. He didn’t know what he’d expected, but it wasn’t that.

“My apologies, I never considered you might have somewhere to be.”

“It’s not--I mean, I want to help Noct with the homework obviously. But he’s probably not going to do any of it tonight and if I stay too long it’ll get dark and if I don’t--um.” He stopped abruptly there, as if he’d hit a dead-end in the sentence. Ignis waited but nothing followed.

“Sorry?” he said finally, when Prompto failed to speak. He licked his lips.

“Uh. Just, once it gets really cold for the night. You can’t really get warm.”

“I beg your pardon?” Ignis said. Prompto’s eyes darted to the door again, as if he were a trapped animal and Ignis an approaching predator. He resented being looked at like that. Prompto let out another nervous laugh. The silence stretched between them. Prompto’s posture became somewhat defensive.

“They’re fixing the furnace this week. It’s just I have to get home before it gets dark or it’ll be too cold.”

“Your furnace is broken?”

“They’re fixing it this week,” Prompto repeated, as if that had anything to do with anything.

“Where are you staying?” That was a stupid question. He knew where Prompto was staying. He was staying in his house, with no heat, in the dead of winter. What was missing was  _ why _ was he doing that, and  _ how _ had he not died yet if he was so foolish.

“In my… house.”

“What are your parents using for heat?”

“Well they’re not in Insomnia so like… heaters I assume.”

Before Ignis could gather himself enough to figure out what he wanted to think, let alone what he wanted to say, three things happened. The first was that Gladio came through the door, shook snow from his coat and announced that he was freezing his tits off. The second was that Noctis emerged from his bedroom. And the third was that Prompto descended into a coughing fit hard enough that he fell off his chair, and Ignis only barely managed to grab him by the arm to prevent his head colliding with the countertop.

“Whoa, you want some water?” Gladio said, from where he was tugging his boots off. Prompto gagged through a cough. Ignis led him firmly to the sink and watched him hack mucus up like water from drowned lungs.

He tried to convey something incomprehensible to Gladio with a look, and Gladio predictably did not comprehend it.

It was a little while before Prompto was breathing normally again. No one talked in that time. No one talked while Ignis handed him a glass of water. Prompto was the one who broke the silence, after taking a sip and swallowing what looked like painfully.

“Sorry, my bad,” he said. This time Gladio seemed to understand exactly what Ignis’ expression meant. He changed the subject like it was his job.

“Noct, you’re up huh?”

“Prom, you’re sick?” Noctis ignored Gladio entirely.

“Nah man, I’m good, just have a cold. Slightly.”

“Well sleeping in a house with no heat isn’t exactly going to help you recover,” Ignis said. Prompto’s expression of betrayal had no effect on him. He was already cold with fury, except for the hand which was holding Prompto’s upper arm, because Prompto was burning with fever.

“Sleeping what?” Noctis said, which made less sense than Gladio’s “Sleeping where?” but conveyed the same effect.

“They’re fixing the furnace, this week,” Prompto said, and then he sagged against the counter, and they were going down, they were going down and Ignis could do nothing besides slow the descent. From his place on the floor, Prompto’s cheeks still burned, not with embarrassment or cold, Ignis realized very late.

“Sorry. I should have left,” he said. Noctis opened his mouth to say something probably ill-advised (Ignis could see unlatched fury in his eyes). There was no way to stop him. Or rather, not a way Ignis could think of in time.

“What, and frozen to death?”

And this was the wrong thing to say, naturally, but it had been said, and it hung in the air like smoke, and then Prompto stood up at record speed to be sick into the sink.

And the spell was broken, because that was something Ignis very much knew how to deal with and it took him only minutes to get everyone organized the way he wanted them, Noctis on the couch, Gladio helping Prompto to the bathroom (more like carrying). Himself running water into the sink, rinsing down the grey bile.

“His house doesn’t have heat? Since when?” And ah, that was the thing of Ignis, he spent enough time working to have all the answers that people expected him to know things he could not possibly know.

“I don’t know, Noctis,” he said. And Noctis seemed totally dissatisfied by this answer, but he said nothing. Ignis went back into Noct’s room to find clean clothes. He could hear Gladio and Prompto in the bathroom when he passed.

“You sound awful.”

“Thanks, you too.”

“No, I mean it.” Gladio ducked out to ask Ignis were the thermometer was. When he returned to turn the heat down on the stove Noctis was sitting noticeably on the edge of his seat, with his shoulders straight and head back. Ignis thought about how he’d curled his toes when he put his feet on the floor in the morning, and how he’d pulled extra blankets from the closet for Noctis. But he didn’t let that thought buoy him down a stream of similar thoughts, because they went into places he didn’t want to venture and didn’t think he could come back from unblemished.

Gladio didn’t stick around. There was an ice storm, he went home. Ignis had nowhere to be but at the side of the prince, and he had nowhere to send Prompto and no desire to send him anywhere. He sat reading while Prompto lay on the couch, gazing listlessly at the ceiling and saying nothing.

“Can I get you anything?” Ignis asked. Prompto shook his head. He was drifting, Ignis realized. He thought about retreating into the spare room. Instead he stayed beside the couch. When Prompto fell asleep he was still burning hot. He still had little traces of blood crusted around one nostril. He still looked nothing like the boy Ignis had been introduced to.

Noctis shuffled out of his room a few times, and eventually Ignis told him to just stay in the living room if he was incapable of resting. They shared a quiet dinner at the table. Ignis thought about waking Prompto up but he looked so boneless and exhausted that he didn’t have the heart.

“I care about him so much but he’s such a dumbass,” Noctis said, resting his chin on his hands. Ignis resisted the urge to convey how strongly he could relate.

[[[]]]

Prompto woke up underwater, coughing, unable to reach air. Someone heaved him up into a sitting position and pushed his head between his legs. He spit mucus into a tissue held against his face, as if he was a little kid, as if his hands didn’t work. Someone had a hand on his back. Someone spoke to him softly, and when they went to pull away he reached out on instinct, reaching out without meaning to and took hold of their shirt.

And then he blinked in horror and he was on Noct’s couch, and he was holding Ignis by the hem of his shirt, and Ignis was looking at him with an indecipherable expression. A moment later a hand was pressed to his cheek.

“Are you feeling any better?” Ignis asked.

“I didn’t mean to stay,” Prompto said. The words fell out of his mouth in the dark living room--there was something haunted and intimate about the thin light leaking through the curtains.

“You didn’t have a choice,” Ignis said softly. 

“Oh,” Prompto said. Ignis handed him some water, waited to take the cup back while Prompto drank. He had to say something but the word were going to come out wrong or useless, he was sure of it. He opened his mouth to lie and said something horrible and true instead.

“I don’t think they care about me.” He wanted to snatch the words back even as he was saying them, because the pity that flashed across Ignis’ face burned all the unburnt parts of him.

“I can’t say the same for Noctis. Or myself,” he said. Prompto bit his lip to keep tears from spilling over. They spilled over anyways. Ignis tucked him in to his side as if it was the most ordinary and mundane thing he’d done all day, and Prompto watched the light blink on the side of the TV. Then he shut his eyes, and his arm still throbbed, and the skin on his cheeks was tight, but the deep ache in his bones had receded a little. And in every part of him, he was warm.

The sun came up on Noctis in the living room and Gladio burst in with coffee and breakfast while it was still the crack of dawn. Prompto drifted. He drifted and then flowed back, and found himself still on Noctis’ couch, still under the waves but able to see light.

**Author's Note:**

> shoutout to gnine thank u for beta i would be lying facedown in a ditch without you not dead necessarily just taking a rest
> 
> lessons learned: I cant spell arcade


End file.
